The present invention relates, in general, to computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) systems and, in particular, to a method and system for controlling, monitoring and integrating engineering and manufacturing changes in a manufacturing enterprise.
In a typical manufacturing enterprise, a design engineer in a laboratory creates a design change document whenever changes to a product, or any of its components, is necessary. Changes to a design may include item data changes, bill-of-material changes, or reference document changes. When the changes are completed, the design change document along with the actual changes in items and bills-of-material is sent to each manufacturing location that uses the item as either an end product or component of an end product. At a manufacturing location, a manufacturing engineer responsible for the item at the specific plant analyzes the design changes and, if appropriate, makes modifications to the design changes to accommodate the manufacturing process at the plant. These changes are passed on to the shop floor for actual production.
Although computer-aided systems are widely used in most, if not all, functional areas within a manufacturing enterprise, the traditional approach has been to use several data bases providing limited capabilities to isolated functional areas. Along with the different data bases, it is common for each functional area to use different methods of entering information and tracking changes. In particular, engineering and manufacturing have heretofore not been integrated for information sharing. Thus, manual intervention has been required to transfer technical information between the engineering and manufacturing functions.
There is a need for an integrated manufacturing system that provides enough functionality to both the design and manufacturing engineers so that all tasks involved in propagating the released design and manufacturing changes into actual production are executed efficiently. This requires that the "as built" product be tracked adequately since the "as built" product can be different at each of the manufacturing locations due to differences in local manufacturing capabilities. There is also a need for an integrated manufacturing system that enables monitoring of a given design change at the design center and/or the manufacturing locations, thereby allowing effective control of the interface between centralized design departments and localized manufacturing departments.